Tag: Politics

Could this be a very different kind of general election? Has the ground shifted in British politics? I really don’t know. But as we embark on yet another election campaign, I long to see a different agenda take hold in British politics. Here are seven things I would love to see in this election:

1. A new debate about human rights. So much of the agenda of the past twenty years has been about human rights, tied to the equality agenda, which is really a political correctness conformist agenda. The Human Rights Act 1998 has enshrined the European Convention of Human Rights in UK law, but whether this has ever done anything to extend the concept of human rights is debatable. Many of the rights stated have existed in English law for hundreds of years. The Human Rights Act has done a lot for prisoners’ rights, and has made the job of the prison service much worse, even though we were not a brutal prison regime pre-1998. Also, foreign nationals so often don’t get deported at the end of their sentence because they have a right to a family life and their new girlfriend and baby conveniently lives in Britain. The Human Rights Acts has certainly advanced the LGBT community’s rights, because the focus has been on the more fashionable, politically correct rights of self-expression and identity, while it has failed to guard the most basic right of all, the right to life. In fact, the right to life is being steadily eroded. An unborn child can be destroyed simply because it has Downs Syndrome, and that can happen right up to birth. We would not do that to someone disabled at some point in their life, so why would we do that to someone who has a genetic abnormality that does not prevent them from enjoying a full, educated and integrated life in the community. Please can we have a debate in this election on the human right to life. If we did, it would be a massive change to the political agenda, but it is the most precious right of all.